Books

The Human Race - between 200,000 and 400,000 years old. Our galaxy - 13.2 billion years old. Obviously nothing has been happening in the rest of the galaxy before humans came along - yeah, right!

Artificial intelligence - almost there but maybe not in the way we think.

The Galactic Robotic Company's breakthrough project to produce innately intelligent units had run into major design issues during the development of their muscular skeletal robotic shells. The only way they could see to maintain their lead in the robotics market was to use a sub-species whose biological neural network could be brought up to the same spec as the ones ready to be used in the robotic shells. The end product would be virtually identical. The only slight drawback being that the Federation would probably consider the development totally illegal. But set up the development system on a system out on the fringes of the galaxy and who would know?

With the project nearing completion, Bork has started making runs to isolate units for testing, and Alqirn has been brought in to stabilise them - work that would certainly be classed as illegal by the Federation. Just a pity no one told Alqirn.

Julie McGrovan has attained super-stardom thanks to the bozoids running one of the Galactic Robotics development programs screwing up badly. In an attempt to rectify the situation, Galactic Robotics might just give her the opportunity to save the Human Race from years of servitude, or serving their makers as the system specs would have it. Not that she realises this initially, she's just happy that they got the 'created in your image' bit right for the anatomical compatibility.